A Florida real estate agent was fatally ambushed as she tried to sell a home on Thursday, and police have arrested a 51-year-old man described by neighbors as a “disgruntled tenant” who had recently moved out of the home.
Sara Trost, a young mom from the United Kingdom who started her own business flipping discount homes in South Florida, was sitting in her Jeep in the home’s driveway at 12:30 p.m. when she was shot multiple times, police said.
A neighbor, Roben Cipriani, said he was on a work call at home when he heard two gunshots. “I turn to my wife and I said, ‘I think that was gunshots,’” he told Local 10 News. “I got a little closer to the Jeep and I saw some blood.”
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Hours later, officers arrested Raymond Wesley Reese, 51, of Boca Raton. He is facing a murder charge in connection with Trost’s death.
Police did not disclose a motive for the brutal daylight slaying but neighbors said Reese was a tenant who had recently moved out of the Coral Springs bungalow.
“There was a disgruntled tenant who was evicted,” a neighbor, Donna Smith, told Local 10. “He thought that the realtor, who was showing the home, he thought it was the owner of the house, and she was ambushed.”
An unidentified person close to the Reese told 7 News Miami disputed that Reese was evicted, but said there had been a mutual decision to move out recently.
Trost, 40, was remembered as a devout member of her local synagogue who fostered dogs and volunteered at the Paw Patrol Animal Rescue & Sanctuary. She leaves behind a husband and young toddler.
“[She was] so loving and caring. There wasn’t a project that we started in the community that she wouldn't be a part of,” the Chabad of Parkland’s Rabbi Shuey Biston told CBS12. “She was just a really special person. Anything she touched, she turned to gold.”
